Senior technical judgment, without a full-time hire.
Consulting is the advisory side of Particle: assessments, architecture strategy, and fractional CTO support for teams who need a senior technical decision-maker but aren't ready — or don't need — to hire one. Looking for hands-on development instead? Visit the Service page.
Advice you can act on, not a deck you file away
Most technical advisory work fails for a boring reason: nobody can act on it. A 60-slide strategy deck sits in a shared drive while the actual decision — build this, kill that, hire for this role — never gets made.
We work the other direction. Every engagement ends with something specific: a scoped proposal, a prioritized roadmap, a hiring brief, a go/no-go recommendation. If it can't be acted on inside two weeks, we don't consider the engagement finished.
"Don't hire a CTO to tell you what you already suspect. Hire one to tell you what you're missing."
Four shapes of consulting work
Every advisory engagement fits one of these. You always know what you're paying for before you pay for it.
Assessment
We review your current systems, identify what's actually broken, and write it down — no upsell, just clarity.
Deliverable: 20-page reportStrategy
A technology roadmap, target architecture, and cost analysis you can take to a board, a bank, or an investor.
Deliverable: Roadmap + deckFractional CTO
Weekly strategy calls, architecture reviews, hiring input, and a straight answer when technical decisions get expensive.
Deliverable: Ongoing leadershipOngoing Advisory
Lighter-touch retainer for teams that already have technical leadership but want a senior second opinion on call.
Deliverable: Monthly retainerFrom first call to a decision you can act on
Five steps, always in this order. No step gets skipped because it's "obvious" — that's usually where budgets go sideways.
Discovery call
30 minutes, no slides. We ask about your business, your stack, and what's actually costing you time or money.
Proposal & scope
You get a written proposal: problem, approach, timeline, deliverables, and price. No verbal estimates that turn into invoices.
Assessment or advisory work
Weekly updates and direct access to the advisor actually doing the work — not an account manager relaying it.
Deliver & walk through
A written report or roadmap, plus a live walkthrough — you should be able to act on this without us if you ever need to.
Next steps
Most clients move to a fractional CTO retainer, or come back to us — or our Service team — when the next decision shows up.
Pricing isn't a guess — it's a framework
Before we quote anything, every engagement gets scored on four things. It's the same framework we'll walk you through on the discovery call.
Severity
Nice-to-have, important, or mission-critical? Severity is the biggest driver of both timeline and price.
Complexity
A single-system review and a multi-team architecture strategy aren't priced on the same scale. We size the real work.
Risk
Security, downtime, data loss, compliance — higher risk means more diligence up front, not surprises later.
Time
We estimate research, review, and reporting individually, then pad it — "unexpected work" isn't actually unexpected.
Consulting vs. Implementation
Not sure which side of Particle you need? Here's the honest breakdown.
Consulting pricing
All prices in Canadian dollars. Building something from scratch instead? Fixed project pricing lives on the full Price page.
Hourly
Best for a focused review, code audit, or a second opinion on a specific decision.
Daily
For embedded work — pairing with your team on-site or remote for a concentrated session.
Fractional CTO
Weekly strategy calls, architecture reviews, and on-call technical decisions.
Assessment
5 business days, 20-page report and roadmap — credited toward any engagement after.
What advisory work looks like for a real business
Representative examples of the kind of decisions that land on our desk — illustrative scenarios, not client case studies.
Regional logistics operator
Dispatch was manually reconciling numbers across four spreadsheets, eight hours a week.
Assessed the workflow and handed off a scoped automation plan to our Service team.
A clear build plan instead of a guess, approved by finance in one meeting.
Early-stage SaaS founder
A validated idea, no technical co-founder, and investor conversations starting in six weeks.
Ran a strategy engagement: architecture plan, build-vs-buy calls, and a defensible cost model.
A roadmap investors trusted, and a scoped MVP proposal ready to greenlight.
Retail finance team
An aging system, no in-house technical leader, and a compliance review coming up.
Stepped in as fractional CTO — vendor reviews, migration plan, compliance sign-off.
Passed the compliance review without a full-time technical hire.
One advisor, start to finish
No account manager relaying your questions. On a consulting engagement, this is who's in the room.
Your fractional CTO for the engagement
Every consulting engagement is led by one senior advisor from the first call through the final report — the same person who scopes the work is the one who delivers it, so nothing gets lost in a handoff.
Advisory without the layers
Founders and operators hire us instead of a big-four advisory arm for the same reasons.
You talk to the advisor
No account manager relaying messages to someone you've never met.
Fixed scope, in writing
You see the price and the deliverables before anything begins.
Canadian-based, your timezone
Meetings that don't happen at 11pm your time.
Built to hand off
Reports and roadmaps written so you're never dependent on us to act.
Questions people ask before the call
More questions about builds or pricing? Check Service, Price, or About.
Book your free 30-minute call
No pitch deck, no pressure. Tell us what decision you're facing and we'll tell you honestly whether advisory is what you need.
Request received
Thanks — we'll email you within one business day to find a time that works.